WWMD?

Earlier this evening my cellphone beeped to tell me I'd gotten a text message. I automatically groaned. Mustard looked up from the model plane he's building and said, "What was that for?"

"It's my text message stalker. He sends me the most pointless texts. I Haaaaaate it." I replied. Mustard just shrugged and turned back to his model, but it occurred to me that I need a little bit of advice on how to squelch this stalker. Ruthless advice would be best. And who better to give ruthless advice than our own dear Mustard?

"Listen," I said, "you're a guy, er ... sort of. Maybe you can help. This is the fourth text I've gotten from him today. Every single one of them said, 'Morning' - even the one I got at 8:45 at night. What am I supposed to do with that?"

"Did you respond?" he asked.

"No. He doesn't give me anything to respond to! What am I supposed to say back? Hi? I have to pay 10 cents a text, and I don't want to say hi to him at all, let alone pay 10 cents to say hi. In fact, ALL of his texts are a greeting of some sort: 'Hey', 'Yo girl', 'What's up?' A couple of times I tried to get some conversation going by responding back with 'Hey, what are you up to?' and do you want to know what he said to me? '6 2 200!' Which took me about 5 minutes to figure out means 6'2" 200lbs."

Mustard raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah, I know. RETARDED, right?"

"Mentally" he agreed.

"I finally started being mean to him and saying things like, 'Do you ever say anything beside different variants of hello?' and do you know what he wrote back? 'Yes.' That was it! Just 'Yes.' And he's still sending these hello-style texts. Its been about two weeks now. I don't respond and he won't stop!" I concluded.

"Well, Gretchen, I'm glad you've come to me for advice." and he drew up a little closer. "You think you're being mean by sending a nicely worded message subtly highlighting that his texting style is irritating, but what you don't understand is that giant morons don't understand subtle. You're essentially saying, 'tee-hee-hee, silly boy, you say hi a lot.' but what his giant moron ears hear is, 'You are clever and charming and I love it that you say hi all the time because I'm as needy as you are!' This form of female-male conversation is pretty common. I'm surprised you don't speak idiot-man fluently by now."

I grinned. This is exactly what I needed to hear.

"But it looks like what you've got on your hands here is actually pretty rare. Looks like you've got a genuine ass face loser. Can I say ass face? No? Well sorry. You might need to get a little more comfortable with profanity if you want my advice in the future. Anyway, the point is that this guy seems like he's a real tool. A doofus. An idiotic twit. A ..."

"Right, I get it. How do I get rid of him?"

"You've got to spell it out for him. Don't let there be any room for confusion or misunderstanding. You've got to idiot proof it. Obviously.... Because he is an idiot." he clarified, in case he hadn't spelled it out well enough for me.

"I see." and I did. His logic is irrefutable. "And what if he keeps texting me?" I asked not relishing the idea of the straightforward message I would have to send.

"If that fails then you think, What Would Mustard Do?"

I looked at him expectantly. What would Mustard do?

He looked back with a "no-duh" look on his face and said, "Swear at him. Then block him. Then swear again, for emphasis. Man! It's like you don't know me at all!" And he turned back with a humph to glue the propeller onto his plane.

I sighed, picked up my phone, and chanting "WWMD, WWMD" sent a VERY straightforward text.